Kingdom Scars
by Scarabsi
Summary: Two years ago, Sora was cast off his home world and traveled to many worlds searching for his precious friends, but wasn't able to return. Now, one of those friends, tired of getting in the way, is ready to search for HIM. [HP Xover, on hold for HBFA]


Hello everyone. I'm still alive, although my parents are starting to hate letting me on the computer in favor of making me do a bunch of SAT math problems that I shouldn't know how to solve until January. Most of you are here because you got the Author Alert from me (sort of) telling you that I started a new story, and for some reason clicked on the address underneath even though the statistics stated that the fanfiction was in the Kingdom Hearts category. On the status of IWLADWY, I have a terrible case of writer's block and writer's disinterest, so I might need either some time off from it or lots and LOTS of encouragement. In Miseri's, Riaki's, Koriku's, or Sarah's case, maybe death threats.

To the people who are new to my work, I'm Scarabsi. I've never posted a Kingdom Hearts story before, so please be nice. Also, please note that while compliments make me stutter and blush, critique will make me happy and grateful. Not that compliments don't make me grateful, but critique doesn't give me a swelled head. . .

"Okay! Okay! Stop with the formalities, you're making me choke!" says Squire, appearing in a puff of ninjutsu smoke. "Go speak the way you usually speak! The out-of-character-ness of it all is causing me to feel ill."

I turn to stare at my new head muse oddly. "Since when are you familiar with ninjutsu?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.

"Since you've started reading Naruto. Remember, I'm your jack-of-all-trades muse, right? I learn quickly." With that, Squire performs a series of hand seals. "Bunshin no Jutsu (Copy technique)!" In a flash, two other copies of my purple-haired muse appear beside him.

I poke out the extra Squires and glare at him. "It's odd how you can develop charka just by reading my Naruto manga. . . and in Chinese no less. . . when did you learn Chinese?"

Squire sees an opportunity. "Scarsi doesn't own- "

"Nice try. I don't own Kingdom Hearts. You can't do the disclaimer, Squire."

"Darn."

**-Kingdom Scars-**

The wind blew through the trees, the image of quiet bliss that had grown so tiresome over the years. This island. . . it was so stranded, despite almost being the person's home world.

:You must choose a path.:

Looking around, the person noticed the sand around them parting ways, creating three roads. Two went in different directions to the front, and one went backwards. The person looked to the road on the right, which was gold and bright.

:Do you choose the path of the hero:

The person's clear blue eyes widened as the strange voice asked this strange question, and looked over to the left, where the other front path was. This path was dark purple, and it was hazy and hard to see through.

:Or do you choose the path of the avenger:

The person looked up at the sky, where the strange voice seemed to be coming from. "I don't know," the person called to the sky truthfully.

:The path of the hero is glorious, easy. The hero is famous, well loved by everyone, and is remembered well; yet, the hero is also limited to catering after everybody's every whim. Unhappiness to any individual is failure.:

:The path of the avenger is free, for they are allowed to think any way they wish and are not limited to anything; yet, the avenger is hated by most, and gains many enemies if the deeds go against too many wishes of others.:

The person put their hands behind their back and hung their head down, thinking it over. "So, if I take the gold path, I'll become famous and loved, but I won't be free; if I take the dark road, I'll be free, but I'll be shunned and hated? Is that right?"

:That is correct.:

"Hmmm. . ." The person turned around. "In that case, then I'm not taking either. I'm going to take the third road."

With that statement, the person started walking down the third road, which was an ordinary path of stone. The person paused, then looked back up to the sky. "But, wait. You didn't tell me where this path would go."

:That is the path of the unknown. You will be unpredictable, unreadable, uncaring. You will not side with either the light or the dark.:

The person paused, then spoke again. "Can. . . can you tell me which road my friends took? I know they've been here before."

The strange voice chuckled.

:The one you care for most chose the path of the hero. The one who has protected you since you were young chose the path of the avenger. They both wish you well.:

"Really?"

The person continued walking down the path, and eventually reached a bridge. Halfway through, the bridge started to collapse. Taking a deep breath in shock, the person leapt for the other side and caught the edge.

:You will meet challenges along your way.:

The person looked down, and underneath, the short fall into water disappeared, deepened, and flames licked up onto the person's large shoes. Sweating, the person hurriedly pulled themself up onto the island that the bridge had led to.

:You've gained the power to fight.:

A sinewy string with a stinger on one end appeared in the person's hands, and the person experimentally flung it. It made a satisfying snap against the sandy ground.

:There will be times where you'll have to defend yourself and your friends.:

A tiny black creature appeared in front of the person, and the startled person jumped back.

:Now try attacking that creature.:

Gripping their new weapon, the person flung the whip at the creature. Miss. The person concentrated harder, and flung it again. This time it hit, and the person added two more strikes for more damage. The creature diffused into black blobs of matter and disappeared.

:Those are called Heartless. You have probably seen one before.:

The person nodded in agreement.

:You must be tired of being helpless, of always being protected.:

The person nodded once more.

:You must learn to fight to avoid being useless. Work on your fighting skills, and you will learn to fight. Learn to fight, and you will no longer be helpless. You will no longer be in the way.:

The person nodded for the third time. "Got it."

:Good.:

A figure, cloaked in black, appeared. :Then, you shall be of help. You will meet people in need of help soon. Help them. Do the best of your ability to protect them. But if the danger becomes too great, save yourself. The people you meet will be able to fend for themselves for a set period of time. The most important thing is that you stay alive.:

The person backed away from the cloaked figure, shaking. "Who. . . who are you?"

The cloaked figure crossed their arms and ignored her question. :I am because I think. I think, therefore I am. I come where I am not needed, I am gone when needed most. But in times of great danger, I will lend a hand. I have already helped you. One arm is raised toward the sky. You will awake from this dream soon.:

The person backed away more. "You're just a dream? How can I trust that?"

:Believe. Don't be afraid.:

In the person's eyes, the world seemed to turn white.

:The fate of lives will rest on your shoulders soon.:

The person could barely keep their eyes open now. "Who? Whose lives?"

:You will know when the time comes.:

The world became suddenly black.

:Rest.:

:1234567890:

"Hey, Kairi. Kairi!"

The redhead snapped her eyes open, blinking out the bright sun. When her vision adjusted to the light, the face of her good friend, Selphie, appeared in her face.

"Whoa!"

She stood up and looked around. She had fallen asleep against the paupu tree that Riku had always loved so much. As she looked around some more, she noticed that it was also similar to the island she had seen in her dream.

The dream!

"Selphie! You wouldn't believe it. I had a very strange dream, about-"

"-a huge black thing that swallowed you up? You couldn't breathe, you couldn't whatever, is that it?" Selphie giggled. "That's odd, you've been acting so much like Sora ever since that day he and Riku sailed off without you."

"They didn't sail off without me, they. . ." Kairi sighed, and gave up. She knew that Selphie would never believe her if she told her that they had both gotten stuck in the other worlds and couldn't return home, like she had. She knew it would sound crazy if she told Selphie that she, along with Tidus and Wakka and everyone else who lived on the island, had ceased to exist for a short period of time. She could hardly believe it herself. So she kept quiet.

"I mean, you're even starting to fight and spar, just like Sora used to!" Selphie winked and nodded toward the direction of Kairi's rope-whip, which she had found and had started sparring with when she had first come back to the islands from Kingdom Hearts. She had hoped to be able to fight just as well as Sora, so that she could impress him the next time she saw him. . . if she ever saw him again. . .

"Maybe you were really made for each other. . ." Selphie sighed. "Maybe that's why you've started acting so much like him. . . that's so romantic!" Her expression had gotten dreamy, and her hands were clasped together once again. Kairi blushed as she bent down to pick up her rope.

"I'm feeling up to a tough fight right about now. Where's Tidus?" Kairi asked, eager to change the subject.

"Hey, I fight too! Can't we spar right now? I'm here already!" Selphie pouted, absently swinging her jump rope under her feet.

"Didn't you hear me? I said I was looking for a TOUGH fight!" Kairi teased, sticking her tongue out and making a run for it. To her pleasure, her improvement in speed was starting to show, because Selphie didn't even get close to catching her. She could hear the other girl's distressed cries that sounded vaguely like, "Hey, slow down so I can plummel you!" and "Waa, no fair, you got so much faster!"

Kairi giggled again, whipping a poor Wakka out of the way when he had the misfortune to cross her path. "Hey, ow, ya?" he complained, rubbing his sore arm.

"Sorry! Escaping a rabid Selphie here! Gotta run!" Kairi almost burst out laughing when the poor blitzball fanatic was whipped again by a fuming Selphie, who forgot to apologize. "And sorry you got hurt again!" She went back to running for her life.

"Girls are weird, ya?" Wakka grumbled.

:1234567890:

For the first time in months, Harry Potter did not awake from bed sweating. In fact, the person he had seen in the dream had been so happy, he couldn't keep a smile off his own face, despite his grief.

He had stopped shutting people out of his life because of Sirius; instead, he had started to put on a mask of happiness, so as not to worry others. Although, currently all he was doing was annoying the Dursleys, who had been disappointed that he had stopped being so sad. Oh, well, whatever works for Harry. Annoying the Dursleys was amusing, anyway.

"Good morning, Dudley!" Harry sang as he step-dropped limply down the stairs and into the dining room. The fat boy gurgled moodily at him, and Harry laughed. "Oh, it's okay, Dudley, not everyone is a morning person!"

"Why are you so bloody happy?" Dudley grunted, gripping a mug of coffee. As soon as Dudley started sleeping late, he had needed more coffee to wake up in the morning, and because it didn't violate the vegetable diet that Aunt Petunia was (for some reason) still keeping up, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had happily supplied him with it. He had quickly become addicted.

"I'm sorry! Do you need more coffee, Dudley? I'll pour you another cup! I'd get some for myself, but I might get in trouble for taking some, don't you think?" Still smiling, Harry skillfully snatched a clean mug from the cupboard, spun it around by the handle on his finger impressively, and tipped the coffeepot just enough to pour the perfect amount. All in one swift movement.

Dudley blinked stupidly at him, his slow brain trying to process so many quick movements in such a short amount of time. When every piece finally fell into place, his slim cousin had already set the mug of coffee down in front of him and had proceeded to take some watermelon out of the refrigerator.

"I believe this morning would be a nice one to enjoy a bit of watermelon, wouldn't you agree?" Harry chirped over to him. "It's awfully hot today, isn't it?"

Unable to keep up with the cheerfulness, Dudley let out another rude grunt. Harry only laughed again and began slicing the fruit open. As he was doing so, he spotted the television, which was turned on to the news.

"Unexplainable deaths have been happening everywhere," the reporter was saying. "Witnesses have dwindled to almost nothing, as if the murderer had disposed of the evidence, but the only factor that every story ever had in common was a common flash of green light."

Harry's cheerful eyes dulled with seriousness, although the rest of his face remained the same. This was Lord Voldemort's work, there was no doubt about it. He had expected reports like this ever since the villain had lost reason to hide any longer. The reporter's next comment, however, surprised him a bit.

"This is a story in which we had almost a solid foundation of evidence in which to pin onto a suspect. But," the reporter's expression turned from dull and blank to a slight hint of repressed fear, "because of the last massacre, which happened in a small island off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii, it appears we will have to go back to the drawing board."

"Hawaii?" Harry wondered aloud, slightly confused. Since when had Voldemort bothered to go that far away from Britain?

"This attack, although done in a very different approach, seems to be either done by the same person or has been working with the person who has been issuing the previous attacks. Instead of a flash of green light, which has grown to be the expectation, the citizens were killed by a swarm of what appeared to be a series of small, black shadows." The reporter's face was replaced by a fuzzy picture. It seemed to have been taken with a dirty camera, and the creature in the picture was so hard to make out that the only part of the creature that wasn't a fuzzy black was its eyes, which were large and yellow.

Harry stared, no longer paying attention to what the reporter was saying. What was that? That didn't look like anything that he had ever seen in Care of Magical Creatures class, or in Professor Lupin's Defense Against Dark Arts class. And, although he was no Hermione, he had flipped through the Monster Book of Monsters at one point (when he was feeling very suicidal) and hadn't remembered seeing anything that even remotely resembled the fuzzy black creature.

So what was that?

:1234567890:

"I want to play a game!" giggled Selphie. "A cute, fun, little kid's game!"

"Selphie, do you remember how old you are? You're already sixteen," complained a very bored-looking Tidus. The young boy had grown to be the most handsome boy on Destiny Islands. Although, much to his annoyance, most of the girls admitted that had Sora or Riku stayed behind, both of them would easily outweigh him in terms of good looks. Whenever he heard this, he snorted and turned his face away, insisting that 'you girls wouldn't know good-looking if it bonked you on the head,' to which the girls usually responded by stealing his red stick and chasing him around with it. The only girls that didn't participate in this immaturity were Kairi, Lulu, and the girl who had just moved in, Yuna.

It was no secret that the shy girl, who had moved in from a place called Besaid Islands, had a thing for Tidus. Practically everyone in Destiny Islands knew except for Tidus himself. And Yuna was grateful, being the incredibly shy girl she was.

"I don't care if I'm sixteen! Let's play Hide and Seek!" Selphie suggested, to which Tidus groaned again.

Yuna laughed softly at the childishness that Selphie radiated. "Perhaps we should play a more challenging game. For example. . ." she paused to think of a good, immature game that Selphie would enjoy, but would not make Tidus groan again. ". . . a good Treasure Hunt?"

"Hey, that sounds fun!" Selphie agreed. "Let's make it nice and hard! Betcha I can find more stuff than Tidus can!"

"Hey, was that a challenge?" Tidus finally looked as if he weren't going to be bored to death. "Well, how much do you think YOU can find?"

"I'll find ALL of it!" Selphie promised, sticking out her tongue. "Let's split up into teams!" She immediately latched onto Kairi. "I'm taking Kairi!"

Tidus growled. Kairi was the best at finding things. Whichever team she was on was almost always guaranteed to win. "Hey, that's not fair! You got to pick first!"

The hyper girl huffed. "Well, then, we're a team of two and you're a team of three. Selphie and Kairi versus Tidus, Wakka, and Yuna! There!"

"Fine!" Tidus put an arm around Wakka and an arm around Yuna. "Come one, let's go kick their butts!"

"Last I remembered, we need some treasure to find before we can find it, ya?" Wakka said, slightly confused. Tidus nearly fell down.

"I almost forgot about that. . ." Tidus grumbled. "But, who's going to hide our treasure?"

Yuna had the answer to this problem. "I asked Lulu to hide some for me earlier today. I wanted it to be ready in case this happened."

"Wow, thanks, Yuna! You saved us!" Tidus affectionately wrapped an arm around her waist. "Hey, I owe you now!"

Yuna turned bright red. "I- it's alright, really. . ."

Kairi could barely suppress a giggle at how clueless Tidus could be.

:1234567890:

Hermione was reading in her room. Well, of course she was studying! How else would she ever keep her grades up in her sixth year? In fact, she had to study extra hard this summer, if she were to pass all her exams AND keep up with her prefect duties!

In the middle of a most interesting chapter about a retired king who wrote a dark thesis studying unknown mysteries, she heard a tapping sound from the window. Looking up, she was met with the sight of Hedwig, Harry's snowy owl, who had an envelope tied around her legs. She was begging entrance.

Setting a bookmark in her book so as not to lose her spot, Hermione hurried to open the window for the poor bird. Hooting in an annoyed fashion, Hedwig stood and preened herself as Hermione untied the message around her legs.

"Um. . ." She thought hard as Hedwig looked at her expectantly. "You. . . go to Ron's room and stay with Pig." Hedwig snorted in disgust at the mention of the annoying, tiny, hyper owl, but flew off in the direction of Ron's room.

Looking at the front of the envelope, Hermione raised an eyebrow in confusion. The front of the envelope was completely blank, as if the person had no time to bother with writing an address. Usually, only Ron or Harry would do this, but she was staying at Ron's house, and Harry hadn't written to her all summer. Hoping against hope that the envelope was from Harry, she tore the envelope open and opened the letter eagerly, being careful not to rip the paper. After reading the letter once, twice, three times, her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates.

"RON!"

:1234567890:

Ron was in the middle of eating his breakfast when a he was hit by a blur of brown, bushy hair. "Hmmphmphr!" He choked out, his mouth full of egg and bacon.

"Ron! Ron Ron Ron Ron Ron. . . It's urgent news! Come on, hurry up and finish your breakfast, I have to tell you about it! But, it's top secret, so you have to promise me not to tell anyone else."

"Tell who? Mum and dad, and Fred and George?" Ron asked, still coughing a little.

"No! We can't tell them! They'll just try to stop us! Make sure they don't see it when Dumbledore comes in-"

"No, Herm, I meant why are you telling me something I can't tell anyone else if Mum, Dad, Fred and George are already at the table listening to every word you say?"

"-because he told. . . wait. What?"

Ron sighed, and forcefully turned Hermione's head toward his family, which had stopped eating to listen to her.

"What's so top secret that we can't know?" Fred (George?) wanted to know.

"Yeah! And what's the point, when you know we'll find out eventually?" George (Fred?) added.

"I think you have some explaining to do, dear," Ms. Weasley said, eyes filled with concern even though her arms were on her hips.

Hermione gulped.

:1234567890:

Um, and that's it for now! I'm sorry the chapter is so short, but I was just getting warmed up. . .

Also, you have to tell me what sort of pairings you would like. Even though I am taking a wild stab at plot (Ra forbid!) I am still a mushy-gushy matchmaker at heart. So, if there are any juicy couples that you'd like, straight or not, just tell me! I'll consider it. And if there are any questions you want answered, please feel free to ask!

Remember to review! I need to know whether this is a good start or not. Thank you for reading!


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